Saiban
A Community Reshaping Expectations
by Jacqueline Novogratz
October 2007: Along the Grand Trunk road outside of Lahore sits Khudaki-Basti 4, Saiban’s latest housing
development. Approaching in the distance we see what once had been an empty
field and is now an emerging community. We drive down the new access road, not
yet paved, but still a key infrastructure development to the success of Saiban.
We are greeted by Jumshaid, the project manager who has been in charge while
Jawad is in New York City
as an Acumen Fellow. He brims with enthusiasm.
Tall and lanky, wearing a black shirt and grey jeans, his hair neatly
cut with a part down the middle, he immediately took us through the scheme,
block by block, listing accomplishments as well as challenges.
“We already have started building our school and it will have the highest
level quality education. There will be
one mosque in the society and a large park in the center. You see where the shops are? And we will
provide underground water for drinking for the whole society. But it will be
clean water. It will cost us $40,000 to set up the infrastructure but then the
people will pay a small amount for association fees – 200 rupees maintenance
($3.3) per month.” The water in the area
has been contaminated by industry, which is why Saiban has decided to bring
water to the entire community through a deeper tube well, instead of relying on
shallow hand pumps. Underground piping for drinking water is unheard of in most
places where poor people live, and this system will send an important message
of what can be included in a low-income development project.
Saiban II is still in the early stages, attracting “early adopters” to the
development while bringing services slowly and incrementally. Jumshaid tells
us, “Once these services are established, it will be easier to convince people
of how much this can improve their lives. Today we have people who will take
some risk with us.” In April 2007 there were thirteen brave families living
there, with no services or frills. But now, not even six months later, there
are 50 houses up, 30 are already occupied and 10 more are under construction.
The commercial sales manager joins us.
With his white beard, white skullcap and pale grey kurta, his dark brown
skin and kind, black eyes create a stunning contrast. His job is to go to different areas of
Lahore, especially around markets, to sell the idea of the development and of
mortgages to the poor. He himself asked
for the position after receiving the first mortgage at Saiban.
“You see,” he explains, “when I lived in Lahore, I was a squatter, living on someone
else’s land and paying 3,500 rupees per month ($58) for rent. Now I pay only
2,500 rupees and I am an owner. This is my house and my land.” We walk with him through the development to a
one room, unfinished house in the corner.
His aunt sits on a cot while his wife cooks outside in the open air of
the tiny courtyard. It doesn’t look like
much, but as he said, it was his. And that has made all the difference.
Forty-eight years old, he is unafraid to try new things. I ask what he did when
he lived in town. “I was a shopkeeper, selling sundries,” he said. “Now my son
runs a shop here.” And there it was, one
little shop where a young man was selling soaps and rice, matches and bread and
other essentials. Though his customer base is only a couple hundred strong,
he’s the only game in town – and for the first time, I can really imagine that
in a year or two, when 3,000 people are living in this development, a micro-economy
will arise enabling not only shop keepers but people providing an array of
services and products to thrive in the new community.
In the middle of the block, a perfect square of well-kept grass ringed by
pink flowers has emerged as the residents’ own park. It took Jawad a long time to convince the
residents to help him create the park, so out of frustration, he started doing
the digging himself which shamed a few residents to pitch in and help him.
Today, the park is a sign of prosperity and respect and beauty. The residents
use part of their monthly fees to pay a gardener a few rupees a month to do the
upkeep, but Jawad tells me that they also now are often seen helping the
gardener, for this too is a major transformation of what people who have lived
their entire lives in slums can expect.
This notion of helping people take small steps to raise their
expectations for themselves and then live up to them is, perhaps, the most
important part of the development process – hard to measure, to be sure, and
harder to do – but it is what ultimately enables people to start changing their
own lives.